HOW TO...Live in A Fabulous Bargain Bachelorette Pad!

I pride myself on having an excellent shopping sense. The evidence, I believe, is my wardrobe--such as my six beloved pairs of Jessica Simpson shoes, each pair costing me under $30, or my "I can't believe it's not leather" jacket, only $13.99, or the countless amounts of clothes I've found on Ebay. However, as of late, my closet isn't the only aspect of my life benefiting from my razor-sharp bargain-hunting skills.

I have spent my life in a series of "convenient" home decor. I lived in a dorm room throughout undergraduate, with a bedroom full of old junk still at both my mom's house and my dad's house. Upon moving into my first real apartment when I entered graduate school, I simply brought along a sampling of said junk from each of those rooms and dumped into a new apartment, along with some cheap furniture pieces I found at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore and some hand-me-down pieces from my late grandmother. The result? I looked like I lived in a never-ending garage sale. Nothing matched. Nothing was new. That cheap furniture was quickly made to look even cheaper, thanks to my pets. But what could I do? I thought to myself, "I can't afford nice things. I can't afford new things." I scanned the local Goodwill on a weekly basis, hoping I'd stumble into some amazing find. Occasionally, if I spotted a deal at the Family Dollar, I'd snatch it up, regardless of whether or not I actually needed the sale item. And my apartment became overstocked with mismatched picture frames and broke-down furniture--like my infamous leaning bookcase, which I laughed off to guests as a "Betelgeuse piece." Also, I knew it dissatisfied guests that my two TVs were small, 15-year-old sets my parents had donated to me, instead of anything worth watching.

Last June, I moved from my first apartment into an older, but very charming, historic home, which many say looks like a castle. (See a pic of my building.) I had an amazing apartment on the first floor, with arched door frames and real hardwood floors. But all this old junk made this incredible interior architecture look, well, junky. Even with an incredible new set-up, I didn't want people over at my apartment. And so I thought, "I've got to do something." I anticipated saving up lots of money to redecorate my apartment, so I began scouting items I'd eventually buy. And you know what I discovered? I didn't have to wait! A fresh, adorable new apartment was completely affordable already! So with that lengthy introduction, let me show you how my I re-invented my new dream pad!

1.) A New Place to Lounge

Total Cost to Revamp: $220

Take a peek at my old living room set. As I mentioned, I purchased the love seat ($100) and arm chair ($50) from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and they very quickly showed just how "used" they were after my dogs began sleeping on them. I desperately needed a new couch--something that wasn't already beat down from a previous owner, and something bigger than my loveseat, on which I could actually stretch out while watching TV. Some time in March, I was browsing the clearance furniture section at Big Lots and found a brand-new couch for $200. One of the legs of the couch had broken, so they sawed off the other three and were selling it for 50% of the original price. $200 for a large, new sofa--especially one soooooo comfortable!!--was too good of a deal to pass up. Almost six months later, the couch still looks and feels brand-new, and is the perfect replacement for my used loveseat/arm chair combo. I found some fashionable pillows at Wal-Mart for $6.99 each, and tossed all those red hand-me-downs behind the couch for sleepovers. And, look, the pets can lounge all they want without me having to worry it'll collapse under them! ;)

2.) A New Entertainment

Total Cost to Revamp: $700 - $800

As I mentioned earlier, my very small, old-fashioned TVs were not impressive for company. I had acquired a few amazing accessories--like a VCR/DVR combo, and some awesome stereo surround speakers hooked up to a turntable--but it was still somewhat unenjoyable without a clear, large TV screen. I hunted around, and WalMart.com (yes, the website, not the actual stores) always had the best deal. I purchased a 40" LCD HDTV with 1080P for just $399. Although that specific deal is not available at this time, there are many other great steals on the Wal-Mart website. I also purchased a refurbished Wii bundle from Best Buy's online Outlet Center for just $129.99 and some extremely cheap games from Ebay, all with free shipping--House of the Dead 2 & 3 ($4.99), the amazing Beatles Rock Band bundle ($130), and the Wii Fit bundle ($35). I also found extra controllers and Wii accessories on Ebay with free shipping, all under $10, and began subscribing to Netflix so I could have Netflix Instant on Wii. I also purchased a barely used PS2 bundle for my bedroom, containing the console, a memory card, two controllers, and 12 games, all for $29 on Ebay. With my amazing new TV and Wii set-up, my living room is the prime set-up for entertaining company!

3.) A New Focal Point

Total Cost to Revamp: $30

My apartment has a beautiful, though nonfunctioning fireplace--an excellent centerpiece for decorating a living room. This is how I originally (in my "junk" days) set up my fireplace. However, my boyfriend just gave me a gift: a gorgeous fleurs de lis iron fireplace screen! My new plan is to put some tall candles behind the fireplace screen and give the effect of having a real fireplace. I'm also mounting my new TV above it. And no, I don't have to spend $200 to have someone come to my apartment and mount this 40"--I bought a user-friendly OmniMount Pro wall mount for $29.99 from Meijer.

4.) A New Place to Dream

Total Cost to Revamp: $130
Now, let's be honest. I'm a bachelorette in my twenties dating a guy who's about to turn 38--so "juvenile" isn't really the mood I want to conjure to a guy's mind when he walks into my bedroom. However, my room originally looked, well, childish, cheap, unsophisticated, and generally lackluster. I didn't need it to be "girlier," I needed it to be more womanly, more feminine. I needed my room to stop looking like the inside of a dorm, and be a grown-up bedroom. So what was I to do--gut it out, and completely re-do it? No. I eliminated the hot pink curtains and accent rugs, all the dated trinkets and picture frames, plastic shelves, and college-y decor (Christmas lights...what was I thinking?). I replaced all that "kid stuff" with some framed art (featured later in blog), young-but-classy green and white curtains from Wal-Mart ($18), and an all-over lack of clutter and pink! I found that I could keep many of the green accents; they were more subdued than the hot pink. Most importantly, though, I made my bed grow up! I didn't want to spend over a hundred dollars on new bedding. I was tempted to purchase a beautiful black satin sheet set I found on Amazon for $24.99, tempted to buy luring higher-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets--but, I was smart. I tossed out the dorm-appropriate black comforter and replaced it with a soft, white Ralph Lauren down comforter I found at T.J. Maxx for $35, and got rid of the childish pillow collection in place of just the shams that came with the comforter, along two plush sage green pillows I found at T.J. Maxx for $8 each. I kept my dark pink sheets with the bedding to prevent it from becoming too "old," and added a crisp white bedskirt from Wal-Mart ($21.50). Most significantly, I added a gorgeous white canopy (yes, you can have a canopy even if you don't have a canopy bed!), for just $40. Now, my bedroom went from being "girly" to "feminine" and "cute" to "elegant"--without having to buy any new furniture! I now have a sophisticated, inviting bedroom--perfect for any bachelorette dating an older man!

5.) A New Primping Ground
Total Cost to Revamp: $55

The downfall of my new apartment: one teeny-weeny bathroom, with no storage space at all. This is what it looked like when I first moved in. I vamped it up with some low-cost zebra-print decor from Wal-Mart and even accenting with zebra print outlet covers (about $5 each) from one of my favorite Ebay users, Who Gives a Crap? Creations, an extremely helpful and handy seller. To solve the storage problem, I also turned to Wal-Mart for some shelves ($24), hanging toilet paper holder ($6), over-the-door towel rack ($9), and vanity shelf ($8).

6.) A New Mood

Total Cost to Revamp: $215

In case you didn't notice in the first item on the list, I was too embarrassed by my hand-me-down curtains to actually hang them up, so when I bought my new couch, I also picked up some low-price, but very chic, curtains from T.J. Maxx. T.J. Maxx has proven to be my saving grace in decorating the walls of my apartment; I couldn't even begin to tell you how many items I've purchased there. When it comes to wall decor, T.J. Maxx is invaluable. Check out some of my finds:

Large James Dean wooden print, $12.99

Artistic framed Marilyn Monroe canvas prints, $19.99 each

Buddha wall decal, $9.99

Marilyn Monroe wooden print, $14.99

Wal-Mart also offers many good deals on wall art. One of the neatest things you'll find there is that you can actually make your own prints. They sell several different sizes of poster prints, priced anywhere from $0.99 to $4.99, and accompanying frames ranging from $0.99 to $2.99. For my office, I bought seven Van Gogh prints and white wooden frames, and the bill was under $40. Wal-Mart also has very similar bargains to T.J. Maxx's sturdy-material prints. Check these finds out:

Victor Jorgensen's "Kissing the War Goodbye" wooden print, $12.99

Marilyn Monroe, "I Wanna Be Loved By You" wooden art, $12.99

Big Lots also proved to be a very valuable source for wall art. I found a huge assortment of pin-up girl tin signs for $6.99 each to decorate my kitchen. When I first set out to re-decorate my apartment, I spent quite a bit of time browsing AllPosters, a website which allows you to custom design poster prints with matting and frames. AllPosters can become very expensive--my boyfriend, for example, just spent $120 on a matted, framed, 11" by 17" copy of the Full Metal Jacket movie poster. I wanted the finished, sophisticated look of framed art, but I didn't want to spend $200 on each piece. So I decided to embark on doing this myself, and I was definitely pleased with the results. Did you notice the John Lennon piece hanging over my couch in the first item on my redecorating list? The print, which has the lyrics to "Imagine" over Lennon's face, was only $4.99 on Amazon, and the black wooden frame with faux gold matting, was $5.99 at Big Lots. Here are a couple other selections I've framed myself:

Marilyn Monroe Playboy Centerfold Poster, $9.99 with Free Shipping, Ebay; Black Poster Frame, $9.99, Meijer

Bob Dylan, "I Accept Chaos; I'm Not Sure Whether It Accepts Me," Poster, $6.99, Amazon.com; Brown Wooden Frame, $5.99, Big Lots

The most important lessons to learn from this blog? NEVER think you can't afford to live in the kind of style you want, and ALWAYS explore your options. I stumbled onto a new couch and an amazing TV not even expecting to find anything, and I purchased my Wii and Playstation bundles after a lot of research about my different price options from different sources. The Internet is a very valuable shopping tool. Don't get stuck in the rut I did and live in a juvenile, mix-and-match collection of secondhand junk just because you're afraid you couldn't afford to have more elegant and adult surroundings.

Like these ideas? Stay tuned because I will soon post more home improvement blogs, one about my path to closet organization (it's a rocky road, too!) and one about remodeling an old "new" addition to my apartment.

A Tribute to Dick Lester

This is a good morning; while waiting to pick up my Brittany spaniel from the groomer, I'm sitting in my apartment, snacking and watching one of my favorite films, How I Won the War, a 1967 film by one of my favorite directors, Richard Lester. Surprisingly, I was able to DVR this off the Family Channel, of all places! And it occured to me while watching this--are any of my friends familiar with this film, or Richard Lester? And if they were to sit and watch this, would they even understand it?


Dick Lester is perceived today as being one of the most understated directors in history. He steered away from A-list blockbusters and instead focused on making unique and often quite artistic films. His films are hilarious, to those who are able to keep up with the frantic, witty British humor of the 1960s in which Lester, and the Monty Python movies, engaged--a style so unique I can only think to describe it as "cerebral slapstick." Lester refused to follow common standards of filmmaking; particularly I have noticed his films are so oddly paced--the dialogue and movement are often very hectic. Although he is most known for the three Superman movies (and the Three Musketeers films and Butch & Sundance films...and that Robin and Marian film with Audrey Hepburn and Sean Connery...never mind, though...), I'm going to highlight my three favorite Dick Lester films in this blog. They all actually use most of the same actors; Lester had favorite character actors, like the delightful Roy Kinnear, who he re-used film after film.

1. How I Won the War (1967)

Don't be fooled by the movie box; How I Won the War is not a John Lennon film, in the way that, say, Desperately Seeking Susan was a Madonna film. Admittedly, I wanted to see this movie so badly because of my adoration of Lennon, and although he is hailed as the "star," his character, Gripweed, has little screen time and even less dialogue--although he does deliver some very memorable lines. It's difficult to imagine a star of such magnitude as Lennon appearing in a film today and the film not focusing on extreme close-ups of the mega-celebrity, or attempting to support whatever "image" the superstar already had. (Can you imagine, for example, if Kurt Cobain had made a movie...could he have played anything but a moody, depressed tough guy?) However, the film nods only once to Lennon's celebrity--at the beginning, Gripweed is asked if he's married, and he replies, "No, I play harmonica," a quiet homage to the Beatles' early records with Lennon on mouth organ. Lennon is truly a small part of the film, which is also a testament to his seriousness about the film and trying to be a good actor, as opposed to just using this as another vehicle for fame or money. Other Lester favorites, such as the comically innocent and passionate Michael Crawford as Lieutenant Goodbody, give excellent performances. The fast-paced dialogue, influenced by a novel and a play, is so witty, it even makes the most astute viewer want to pause the film and ponder what they just heard. The film takes on so many different perspectives, it's almost unsettling; sometimes, the characters unexpectedly turn and speak to a "fourth wall." In a very memorable moment during one character's death, another character actually ushers away one of Lester's cameramen, saying, "There, there, you've seen enough." At one point, the film switches to a movie theatre, and our characters are on the big screen, with people eating popcorn, watching them die. It is that astonishing filmwork that makes Lester so unique and this gritty film so disturbing. Lester's ideas were far ahead of his time; for example, adding canned laughter to a war scene, and altering the colors of the movie (each stage of the war is depicted with a different overall tint). How I Won the War is one of the most understated and intellectual films I have ever seen, and truly an ignored piece of cinematic greatness, and provided one of the best quotes of the 1960s--"We've got to find a more humane way to kill people!"





2. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a huge leap from How I Won the War--it is an almost pointless movie, and certainly not as dark as HIWW, but nonetheless very similarly absurd. It follows the same fast pace as Lester's other films, however, unlike the very well-composed HIWW, the cast in FTHWF are constantly outshining each other--and it may not be unintentional. Buster Keaton and Phil Silvers seem to constantly be stealing each other's spotlight, somewhat in accordance with their characters' feuding. Dick Lester packed the film with so much noteworthy talents that one stand-alone "star" would be hard to determine; it would even be difficult for the audience to pick one favorite character. While a seemingly innocent flick, the film is packed with very adult humor; perhaps its PG rating is because the humor would sail right over most children's (and many adults') heads. I've seen this movie several times and can never help but to laugh hysterically at many of the scenes. It's the most audience-friendly version of Dick Lester's wit, the most easily understood of his 1960s films. There are unforgettable quotes heavy on clever wordplay that would make anybody giggle, but truly, it's the actors who make this movie--not even Lester's brilliant directing and management. Although meaningless, Forum is a hilarious waste of time.



3. Help! (1965)

The fact that this movie was a part of the Beatlemania of the early and mid-1960s is very unfortunate, because it will never be taken seriously as a film, but always seen as "one of the Beatles movies," like Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine. Lester, who also directed A Hard Day's Night, also downplays his work with the Beatles, stating that he allowed them to re-write his scripts because their natural jargon was much funnier than his writing, and also saying that the films' settings were simply determined by where the band wanted to vacation. However, the music could be taken out of Help! entirely, and you would still have a solid comedy, unlike A Hard Day's Night, which is dependent on the presence of the hit records it was designed to promote. Unlike HDN, there is a plot, centering around a Middle Eastern cult who ritually sacrifices its members and has the chosen sacrifices wear a holy ring before their death. Ringo Starr, in all his Beatlemania-era womanizing, has a fling with one of the cult members and unknowingly comes into possession of the holy ring. For the rest of the movie, the Beatles are fleeing from the deadly cult, with the help of an insider (Eleanor Bron) and two scientists determined to capitalize on the band's peril (Lester favorites Roy Kinnear and Victor Spinetti, both in defining roles). Although lighthearted, the movie actually has some well-done scenes of intrigue as the boys are on the run. And while it falls prey to mid-60s cinematic exploration--such as the scene where Paul is injected with a drug that makes him shrink so small he can fit into an ash tray--the film's strength comes from the performances of the Beatles themselves and their hilarious dialogue. If Lester honestly did let the Beatles re-write their projects with him, he made a smart move; certain quotes from the movie will linger in my head for days after I've seen it. It's hard not to chuckle throughout the movie at the very witty dialogue. And although the Beatles' music probably weakened the film's cinematic credibility, it's undeniable that the inclusions of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "The Night Before," and other mid-60s classics isn't thoroughly enjoyable. :=)

(Just Like) Starting Over

Hola! Well, here's to my first post in a brand-new blog. I've been on Blogger for a few years now. My first blog, "Watching the Wheels," [whatsthenewmaryjane.blogspot.com] was a very intimate diary, kept on Private, and only shared with one confidante.

My brand-new blog, "Junk," will not be so personal. Its purpose is so far undetermined, but I assure you it will serve as a sounding board when I need to bitch and complain, or when I simply want to share! And, truthfully, I hope it will restore my regular writing habits, which, unfortunately, have become infrequent and poor in quality. (Perhaps "Junk" will also inspire me to finally update "Watching the Wheels," too.)

In celebration of "starting over," I'll begin by sharing what is probably my all-time favorite poem.

LOOKING AT PICTURES TO BE PUT AWAY

Gary Snyder

Who was this girl

In her white nightgown

Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck

She looks up at me tender

Calm, surprised

What will we remember

Bodies thick with food and lovers

After twenty years

P.S.: Check me out on http://www.twitter.com/alliwillingham, too!